Monday, April 10, 2006

Sharing the wealth

The reports of our past greats finding it hard to make ends meet have been too frequent in recent times. BCCI, or should I say the 'new BCCI' has taken one more positive step, and I believe should be given a lot of credit, as it is due this time around. Healthy pension for past cricketers (even their widows), umpires and funds for development of non-cricketing sports are definitely good moves in the right direction of using the wealth to improve the health of the game. For example, making umpiring lucrative is a much-needed move, especially in India which currently has no representation in the Elite Panel (and rightly so). We need more people taking it up as a profession, and the quality is obviously bound to follow.

Just for record, Pawar speaks here about the expected revenue for BCCI - Rs 4000 crore in next 4 years - approx USD 200M per year.